Known in the art is a conveyer for transporting newspapers from printing machines to devices for their treatment, comprising a continuous chain formed by hingedly interconnected carriages moved by wheels along a guide track (CH, A, 592562).
In the prior art conveyer the guide track is made in the form of "C"-shaped box profile which is rectangular in cross-section with a groove in one of the sides passing along the longitudinal axis of the track. Moving inside this profile are the chain carriages, each being fitted with three wheels. One wheel is introduced in the groove of the "C"-shaped profile of the track and interacts with its ends by its rim. The other two wheels are arranged inside the profile to both sides of the first one and are connected by a common pin perpendicular to the pin of the first wheel.
The prior art conveyer, although it allows for spatial movement of printed newspapers from printing machines towards devices for their treatment, yet, it is metal intensive because its guide track is made in the form of a box profile and is hard to manufacture due to the profile sections strongly in space. Besides, in this construction it is only two wheels that can be supporting ones, while the third wheel can only function as a guide. This limits the possibility of selecting the trajectory of the space conveyer. For example, it cannot be bent in the plane perpendicular to the walls of the C-shaped profile along which the carriage wheels roll because in this case the chain links are arranged in cantilever on guide rollers in the curvalinear section of the track, while the rest link rollers do not roll, but rub against the track walls to result in the damage of the guide rollers hanging on a narrow end of the C-shaped tack profile, skewness of the carriages, wearout of their free wheels and the track.
Closest to the claimed conveyer by its technical essence is a space conveyer comprising a traction unit in the form of hingedly inter connected links, each accommodating support rolling-contact bearings and load carriers, as well as a guide track in the form of a number of supporting elements (Voroffentlichung DE 3790593T). In this conveyer the rolling-contact beatings are made in the form of ball supports. In so doing, each link is shaped as a race to house the ball support therein, and the supporting elements of the guide track are equidistant from the latter's axis and from a closed polygon in the section perpendicular to the conveyer axis. In order to stabilize the load carrier position because of a large number of the degrees of freedom of the ball support, each link has a guide roller.
Although this conveyer provides for the selection of virtually any trajectory of movement of the traction unit, the construction of its links is intricate, because in order to ensure free rotation of the ball support it is necessary to choose such materials for the ball and race which would ensure a lesser coefficient of friction therebetween than between the ball and the supporting elements of the guide track.
The satisfaction of these requirements is associated with over-coming serious technological difficulties and the conveyer operation reliability largely depends on wear resistance of the ball support material.
The invention is based on the problem of developing a space conveyer with such a design of the rolling-contact bearings, and with such arrangement thereof in the links of the traction unit and interaction with the supporting elements which would ensure the design of the conveyer simple and technological in manufacture.